The Rolling Stones had it wrong.
Time is NOT on our side. Time eats away at everything we are and want to be.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing everyone that he didn’t exist. Once we get to that point where days blend into weeks… and months become a blink of a memory… when we convince ourselves that time doesn’t really exist… then time truly is the devil. And the devil has never been on our side.
We say “I don’t know where the time has gone.” How casually we coddle each other with that phrase, and how agreeably addictive we find it. It’s a hollow excuse, ridden with cancerous contempt. Our indulgences empower us to celebrate the routine and urge us to apologize for things not done.
Those who try to lose weight count calories. They create a diary of everything they eat from the smallest crumb to the largest steak. They realize all the indulgences they allow themselves, and if they’re smart, they can correct it.
Does anyone ever count time in the same manner? Create a diary of everything they’ve done from the moment they awake to the moment they lay their head down at night? Do they see how much of their day is spent achieving nothing? For that matter… do I?
For the past few months, I have rarely put pen to paper, put fingertips to keyboard, put my mind into action, on something… ANYTHING… that will remind me of who I am and why I am on this Earth.
I have a few stories that I should be working on… some imaginings that have rattled around my brain like a ball on a roulette wheel. I have so much to offer and so much I want to accomplish… and yet each day passes by with the bland hope of a better tomorrow.
Instead of writing.. instead of fulfilling my purpose and promise… I load up my hours with empty endeavors and daily non-tasks. I’ve fallen victim to the Internet maelstrom and to social non-events and conversations of unimportance. I was employed by a corporation that was the antithesis of who I was, and allowed the small modicum of power I had to seduce me into staying in that small pond for far too long. And when I finally had some free time, I chose to indulge my procrastinations with more nonsense.
I know where my time has gone. It has gone to waste.
Ray Bradbury recently said “We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”
And many out there scoffed at him. They’re dismissing him as a man out of touch. An old, grumpy man.
I don’t think he’s wrong. We’ve become a society adept at distraction. Cell phones. Internet. DVR (or TiVo). Email. Netflix. Social networks. Video games. Hundreds of different television programs. Millions of YouTube videos. A billion videos of pornography.
Texting. Instant messaging. Emailing. Twittering. Status updates. Posting pictures. Sharing clips. Downloading music. Keeping up on famous people who are well-known for accomplishing nothing.
Of course there are positive things about these new additions to our life… but as a million philosophers much smarter than me have already said… it’s in our nature to destroy ourselves. And so much of our lives now is spent keeping up on… nothing.
The one thing that separates human beings from all living things in Earth’s history is our ability to create. Yet as we become a nation of technology and distractions and vices and indulgences, we deaden that ability and amputate it and replace it with something ‘not us.’
We don’t create as much as we manipulate things that already exist. These internet mash-ups (INCEPTION meets NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION) or these re-imaginings of films made five years ago… they’re fun, sure. Entertaining, perhaps. Yet it’s creativity at its’ most incestual.
Ray Bradbury didn’t have the ‘internets’ or the cellphones. I’m not even sure he had phones at one point. No television for sure. So he created his own distractions. FAHRENHEIT 451. THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. Over 500 pieces of writing to his credit… a true body of work to be left behind.
Don’t like Bradbury? Try Vonnegut. Stephen King. Robert E. Howard. H.G. Wells. Mark Twain. Issac Asimov. Jules Verne. Charles Dickens. Michaelangelo. Salvador Dali. Pablo Picasso. Frida Kahlo. Shakespeare. Edgar Allen Poe.
For a different perspective: James Cameron has ten feature film credits as a film director. John Ford has over one hundred and forty.
In the absence of distraction, we can accomplish the extraordinary.
If I’m to be truly honest with myself… time has never been on my side. I’ve always looked to the next day as the ‘day that will change everything.’ It doesn’t matter that I accomplished nothing on Tuesday, for Wednesday is just around the corner. I didn’t write today, because I spent the day cleaning and doing laundry… but that’s okay, I’ll get on that tomorrow. Did I mean tomorrow? Sorry, tomorrow I’ll be hungover and unable to move… I meant the next day… I’ll get to it then… after I check my FaceBook… look at the YouTube… catch up on my emails…
I’ve written some really good screenplays. Had many wonderful, amazing, loving, heartbreaking, torturous, depressive, lonely experiences. Laughs and tears. Luck and hardship.
Yet I have accomplished nothing.
If I’m to be truly honest with myself… if I live to be eighty… then almost half of my life is already over.
And what have I to show for it? For that matter… what have you?
When I leave this mortal coil, I don’t want my lasting impression to be a status update that says “RIP Me.” Half my life may have passed me by, but all that means is that I have half a life still coming. My distractions and procrastinations and this devilish virus of time will no longer define me. If they do, then I deserve whatever fate I get.
Make your minutes count. Make the days worth it. And at the end of the week, be sure to have something to show for it. At the end of the month, at the end of the year… when someone at some party laments to you ‘where has the time gone?”
Make sure you have an answer worth celebrating.
